Hundreds of thousands of donkeys killed annually to make medication

By Victoria Gill and Kate StephensScience workforce, BBC Information


To promote water and make his dwelling, Steve relied utterly on his donkeys. They pulled him in his cart loaded with its 20 jerry cans to all his prospects. When Steve’s donkeys have been stolen for his or her skins, he may now not work.
That day began like most others. Within the morning, he left his residence within the outskirts of Nairobi and went to the sector to get his animals.
“I could not see them,” he remembers. “I searched all day, all evening and the next day.” It was three days later that he received a name from a good friend telling him he had discovered the animals’ skeletons. “They’d been killed, slaughtered, their pores and skin was not there.”
Donkey thefts like this have change into more and more frequent throughout many elements of Africa – and in different elements of the world which have massive populations of those working animals. Steve – and his donkeys – are collateral injury in a controversial world commerce in donkey pores and skin.


Its origins are hundreds of miles from that area in Kenya. In China, a standard medicinal treatment that’s made with the gelatin in donkey pores and skin is in excessive demand. It’s known as Ejiao.
It’s believed to have health-enhancing and youth-preserving properties. Donkey skins are boiled right down to extract the gelatin, which is made into powder, tablets or liquid, or is added to meals.
Campaigners in opposition to the commerce say that folks like Steve – and the donkeys they rely upon – are victims of an unsustainable demand for Ejiao’s conventional ingredient.
In a brand new report, the Donkey Sanctuary, which has campaigned against the trade since 2017, estimates that globally not less than 5.9 million donkeys are slaughtered yearly to produce it. And the charity says that demand is rising, though the BBC was unable to independently confirm these figures.
It is vitally tough to get an correct image of precisely what number of donkeys are killed to produce the Ejiao business.


In Africa, the place about two-thirds of the world’s 53 million donkeys dwell, there’s a patchwork of rules. Export of donkey skins is authorized in some international locations and unlawful in others. However excessive demand and excessive costs for skins gasoline the theft of donkeys, and the Donkey Sanctuary says it has found animals being moved throughout worldwide borders to succeed in places the place the commerce is authorized.
Nevertheless, there may quickly be a turning level as each African state’s authorities, and the federal government of Brazil, are poised to ban the slaughter and export of donkeys in response to their shrinking donkey populations.
Solomon Onyango, who works for the Donkey Sanctuary and is predicated in Nairobi, says: “Between 2016 and 2019, we estimate that about half of Kenya’s donkeys have been slaughtered [to supply the skin trade].”
These are the identical animals that carry individuals, items, water and meals – the spine of poor, rural communities. So the dimensions and fast progress of the pores and skin commerce has alarmed campaigners and specialists, and has moved many individuals in Kenya to participate in anti-skin commerce demonstrations.
The proposal for an Africa-wide, indefinite ban is on the agenda on the African Union Summit , the place all state leaders meet, on 17 and 18 February.


Reflecting on a doable Africa-wide ban, Steve says he hopes it’ll assist shield the animals, “or the subsequent era could have no donkeys”.
However may bans throughout Africa and in Brazil merely shift the commerce elsewhere?
Ejiao producers used to make use of skins from donkeys sourced in China. However, based on the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs there, donkey numbers within the nation plummeted from 11 million in 1990 to only below two million in 2021. On the identical time, Ejiao went from being a distinct segment luxurious to change into a well-liked, extensively accessible product.
Chinese language corporations sought their pores and skin provides abroad. Donkey slaughterhouses have been established in elements of Africa, South America and Asia.
In Africa, this led to a grim tug of struggle over the commerce.


In Ethiopia, the place the consumption of donkey meat is taboo, one of many nation’s two donkey slaughterhouses was closed down in 2017 in response to public protests and social media outcry.
Nations together with Tanzania and Ivory Coast banned the slaughter and export of donkey skins in 2022, however China’s neighbour Pakistan embraces the commerce. Late final 12 months, media reviews there trumpeted the nation’s first “official donkey breeding farm” to boost “a number of the greatest breeds”.
And it’s huge enterprise. In response to China-Africa relations scholar Prof Lauren Johnston, from the College of Sydney, the Ejiao market in China elevated in worth from about $3.2bn (£2.5bn) in 2013 to about $7.8bn in 2020.
It has change into a priority for public well being officers, animal welfare campaigners and even worldwide crime investigators. Research has revealed that shipments of donkey skins are used to site visitors different unlawful wildlife merchandise. Many are nervous that nationwide bans on the commerce will push it additional underground.
For state leaders, there may be the elemental query: Are donkeys value extra to a growing financial system useless or alive?


“The general public in my neighborhood are small-scale farmers they usually use the donkeys to promote their items,” says Steve. He was saving cash from promoting water to pay for varsity charges to review medication.
Religion Burden, who’s head vet on the Donkey Sanctuary, says that the animals are “completely intrinsic” to rural life in lots of elements of the world. These are robust, adaptable animals. “A donkey will be capable of go for maybe 24 hours with out consuming and may rehydrate in a short time with none issues.”
However for all their qualities, donkeys don’t breed simply or shortly. So campaigners worry that if the commerce isn’t curtailed, donkey populations will proceed to shrink, depriving extra of the poorest individuals of a lifeline and a companion.
Mr Onyango explains: “We by no means bred our donkeys for mass slaughter.”
Prof Johnston says that donkeys have “carried the poor” for millennia. “They carry youngsters, ladies. They carried Mary when she was pregnant with Jesus,” she says.


Ladies and women, she provides, bear the brunt of the loss when an animal is taken. “As soon as the donkey is gone, then the ladies mainly change into the donkey once more,” she explains. And there’s a bitter irony in that, as a result of Ejiao is marketed primarily to wealthier Chinese language ladies.
It’s a treatment that’s hundreds of years outdated, believed to have quite a few advantages from strengthening the blood to aiding sleep and boosting fertility. However it was a 2011 Chinese language TV present known as Empresses within the Palace – a fictional story of an imperial courtroom – that raised the treatment’s profile.
“It was intelligent product placement,” explains Prof Johnston. “The ladies within the present consumed Ejiao day by day to remain lovely and wholesome – for his or her pores and skin and their fertility. It turned this product of elite femininity. Mockingly, that is now destroying many African ladies’s lives.”


Steve, who’s 24, is nervous that, when he misplaced his donkeys, he misplaced management over his life and livelihood. “I am simply stranded now,” he says.
Working with a neighborhood animal welfare charity in Nairobi, the charity Brooke is working to search out donkeys for younger individuals – like Steve – who want them to entry work and training.
Janneke Merkx, from the Donkey Sanctuary, says the extra international locations that put laws in place to guard their donkeys, “the harder it’ll get”.


“What we would wish to see is for Ejiao corporations to cease importing donkey skins altogether and spend money on sustainable options – like mobile agriculture (producing collagen in labs). There are already secure and efficient methods to do this.”
Religion Burden, the Donkey Sanctuary’s deputy chief govt, calls the donkey pores and skin commerce “unsustainable and inhumane”.
“They’re being stolen, doubtlessly walked lots of of miles, held in a crowded pen after which slaughtered in full view of different donkeys,” she says. “They want us to talk up in opposition to this.”


Brooke has now given Steve a brand new donkey, a feminine that he has named Pleasure Fortunate, as a result of he feels fortunate and joyful to have her.
“I do know that she’s going to assist me obtain my goals,” he says. “And I am going to ensure that she is protected.”